Vineland
XXX Atomic Toejam: “I’m A Cop” on Karmanik Collection (Various Artists, 1993)
This metal interpretation of Billy Barf and the Vomitones’ “I’m A Cop” (356–57) was recorded by Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah and Petter Marklund of Sepülchre Inc. Their band name riffs on Vineland’s band Fascist Toejam. Links: discogs.com | Youtube
Lodger: “Floozy with an Uzi” from How Vulgar (2007)
The Finnish indie band used Pynchon’s “Floozy with an Uzi” (104–05) verbatim. The album name may or may not refer to Gravity’s Rainbow “Vulgar Song” or V.’s “The Vulgar Song.” Links: discogs.com | Youtube
Eddie Enrico and His Hawaiian Hotshots ♥
In 2012, graphic novelist Alan Moore (known for V for Vendetta, in which the main character V is also seen reading Pynchon’s novel) and Tim Perkins published the single “Immortal Love/Home with You,” recorded a couple of years earlier under the name Eddie Enrico and His Hawaiian Hotshots, riffing on Vineland’s Eddie Enrico and His Hong Kong Hotshots and the novel’s Hawaiian themes. The vinyl single was supposedly recorded in the 1950s on a—fictitious—American 1950s label. In an interview, Moore recalls the wrong novel: “The band is called ‘Eddie Enrico and His Hawaiian Hotshots,’ which, I believe, were mentioned very briefly by Thomas Pynchon in his excellent The Crying of Lot 49.” Links: discogs.com | Youtube
Detlef Weinrich a.k.a. Tolouse Low Trax: “Vineland” (2014)
“Vineland” appeared on a sampler. The German electronic musician also recorded “Tristero’s Empire” (see The Crying of Lot 49 section). Links: Beatport | Youtube
Mason & Dixon
Marc Behrens: “Secular Air” from Contraction (1999, remastered 2014)
German electronic musician Marc Behrens writes on Bandcamp that the track was inspired by a passage from Mason & Dixon (188). Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com | Bandcamp
Mark Knopfler: “Sailing to Philadelphia” from Sailing to Philadelphia (2000)
The title track of Mark Knopfler’s album was inspired by Pynchon’s novel. Although he does not adapt Pynchon’s lyrics or excerpts from the novel, his choice of words clearly point to the novel. Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com | Youtube
While Mark Knopfler’s title track was inspired by Mason & Dixon, the artwork takes up maps too.
John Zorn: “Mason and Dixon” from Insurrection (2018)
In 2018, the prolific American saxophone player of all genres released Insurrection, “Inspired by some of the greatest experimental novels of the 20th century,” among which Mason & Dixon. Links: discogs.com | Youtube
Against the Day
Bryan Scary & The Shredding Tears: Flight of the Knife (2008)
The American prog rock band’s album was inspired by Against the Day, “with nearly every song delineating a tale of flight, airships, or the wild blue yonder” (band biography on discogs.com). Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com | Youtube
Los Llamarada: “Against the Day” (2008)
The Mexican lo-fi rock band released this song as a 7″ EP along with two other songs.
Links: discogs.com | Youtube
Land of Kush: Against the Day (2009) ♥
The Montreal-based orchestra around composer and musician Sam Shalabi released an album entitled Against the Day in 2009. The five tracks on the album are named for the five chapters of the novel: The Light over the Ranges, Iceland Spar, Bilocations, Against the Day, and Rue du Départ. There are—appropriately for a novel that is set in different locations throughout the planet—influences of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Western music. Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com
Miscellaneous homages and inspirations
Pere Ubu
On The Modern Word, there is an article that discusses possible influences of Pynchon on the American avant-garde rock band around David Thomas. Besides noting many instances of the number 49 and the fact that they were never shy of dropping literary references from Pynchon to Conrad, they have a song entitled “Navvy” that plays with the flip-flop theme familiar from McClintic Sphere in V. Link: Youtube
(Thanks, John Krafft.)
David Ocker: Thomas Pynchon, His Pavane and Galliard (1988)
David Ocker (who has worked with Frank Zappa, John Adams, and among many others) describes his piece for cello and piano in Pynchon Notes.
Various Artists: German Noise (1990)
Discogs.com lists Thomas Pynchon for the liner notes of a German Noise album by various artists on the Animal Art label, released as a musicassette, but the pictures of the liner notes available online are too pixelated to verify this unlikely claim. I suspect that the liner notes quoted a passage from Pynchon.
Ric Ocasek: Fireball Zone (1991)
John Krafft pointed out this album by the Baltimore-born musician, formerly of The Cars, and wrote: “Why it’s dedicated to Pynchon is anybody’s guess.” I agree. Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com
PopCanon: “Wanda Tinasky” from The Kingdom of Idiot Rock (2000)
The song is about Wanda Tinasky, the lady who wrote funny letters sent to the Mendocino Commentary and Anderson Valley Advertiser between 1983 and 1988. The author of the letter was never pinpointed but many believed it was Thomas Pynchon writing under a pseudonym. Links: The Modern Word | allmusic.com
L’Orchestre Inachevé: L’Égout des Goûts (2002)
The French electronic group credits Pynchon with the lyrics of the first seven tracks of their album (along with others, such as Gilles Deleuze) but I have not been able to assign them to particular books. Link: discogs.com
Les Productions de l’Invisible: L’information (2004)
Les Productions de l’Invisible (featuring some of the same musicians as L’Orchestre Inachevé) mash up texts or lyrics by Pynchon and others with music by different composers. On L’information are the tracks “Uzi 1” and “Uzi 2,” Dopper’s Dream,” “Sa bit à lui,” and “Il est trop tôt encore.” Link: discogs.com
Maya (105): “I Read Pynchon” (Sampler, 2006)
This band which does not seem to have recorded anything else, has a song with the title “I Read Pynchon” on a 2006 label sampler for Good Name for a Racehorse Records. Links: discogs.com
Andrew Bird: “Imitosis” from Armchair Apocrypha (2007)
The song features a certain Professor Pynchon. Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com | Youtube
Kids Explode: “I’d Rather Dance to a Pynchon Novel” (Various Artists, 2008)
The German post-punk/emo band, formed in 2004 and disbanded in 2010, recorded “I’d Rather Dance to a Pynchon Novel” on a 12″ vinyl they share with three other bands. Links: discogs.com | Bandcamp
Songs of My Lap: “Reading Pynchon Through Wet Eyes” from Let’s Go for a Pleasant Drive in the Country (2013)
The British musician released this song on a musicassette/EP. Link: Bandcamp
Hi, I’m Reclusive Author Thomas Pynchon: Thomas Pynchon (2013)
The pop band from Adelaide, Australia, has five tracks on their album, but an intrinsic Pynchon connection is not evident right away. The cover image is put together from Pynchon’s only known photograph and Pynchon as character of The Simpsons. Links: Bandcamp | Soundcloud
Thaumaturgist: Thomas Pynchon Tribute Band (2016)
The mini demo CD by Belgian artist Thaumaturgist features a the picture of Pynchon and muted post horn on the cover. Links: discogs.com | Bandcamp
Pynchon Ward
This British musician Andrew Moody, recording as Pynchon Ward, has a few songs available on Soundcloud.
The Black Hundred: “Thomas Pynchon”
The slow instrumental song by Sweden-based Australian James McGauran is available on SoundCloud.
Oilcan Noise: “I’m Sorry Thomas Pynchon,” “Well Tom,” “Incliningly,” “In Tincans & Risk,” and “Constructively Yours.”
This series of musical letters by the New York band is available on SoundCloud: “I’m Sorry Thomas Pynchon,” “Well Tom,” “Incliningly,” “In Tincans & Risk,” and “Constructively Yours.”
Artist unclear: “She Loved Thomas Pynchon”
On SoundCloud, there are three recordings on different profiles of a song entitled “She Loved Thomas Pynchon.”
Tyler Burba ♥
New York City–based poet, musician, and singer/songwriter Tyler Burba interpreted a number of songs from Pynchon’s novels for my talks in Philadelphia and New York City in 2015 and 2016 and for the event I organized at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich on 8 May 2017 on the occasion of Pynchon’s eightieth birthday. The barely edited live recordings can be found at www.haenggi.com/pynchon-songs.
Visit ♥
On Thanksgiving 2017, Tyler Burba and I decided to record an entire album with Pynchon’s songs. It finally came out on 8 May 2020, recorded by Tyler’s band Visit and entitled “Now everybody—” Visit Interprets Songs by Thomas Pynchon. It contains 14 songs from all of Pynchon’s novels except for Against the Day and some interstitial material. Whenever Pynchon specified the tune to which his lyrics were to be sung, we used those tunes. The remaining ones were composed by Tyler (and one by me). More information and opportunities to order the album can be found at https://now-everybody.party/ and below is a 1980s-style compilation promo video for the CD:
Unverified References
Clarence Clemons
In a memoir with poetic licence, American tenor sax player Clarence Clemons, best known for playing with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, has a chapter entitled “The Legend of Clarence and Thomas (A Screaming Comes Across the Bar), 2008” in which he and Thomas (“nobody calls me Tom”) Pynchon hang out and have dinner. The chapter’s epigraph, self-attributed to Clemons, reads: “I love Gravity’s Rainbow more than mac and cheese. It’s lasted longer and has more nutritional value.” I have no idea if Clemons († 2011) in actuality ever met Pynchon, let alone been friends with him, as Clemons claims, along with boasting that Pynchon had been to over 150 shows and owned a collection of bootleg CDs. No matter, it’s definitely worth a read: Clarence Clemons & Don Reo: Big Man: Real Life & Tall Tales.
Velvet Underground, Live at Max’s Kansas City (1972)
A 1997 post on the Pynchon mailing list quotes the obscure Barbie Chronicles (obscure these days meaning anything not readily found on The Search Engine) in which the author, one Bill Afham (William Afham was one of Søren Kierkegaard’s pen names), writes that in the background of Velvet Underground’s Live at Max’s Kansas City, Barbie can be heard talking to Pynchon about drugs.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 “Entropy” and V.
3 The Crying of Lot 49
4 Gravity’s Rainbow
5 Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and miscellaneous homages (this page)
6 Bibliography and Biography
For myself, reading Pynchon is such a personal experience that I really prefer providing my own soundtrack. This is still a very interesting look at the quite wide influence that Mr. Pynchon ‘s work has had on musicians. I hadn’t realised how wide. My personal preference is Devo’s “Whip It”. It is direct and to the point without extraneous extrapolation. Just sayin’.
Your preference for providing your own soundtrack for reading Pynchon is probably a feeling shared by many of the musicians on this list, I would think, which is why they did create their own soundtrack. Some of the above tracks and albums would still fit nicely into my reading.
I enjoyed this very much and look forward to reading more. A lot of this was new to me and I will seek a lot of these recording out, particularly those which have tried to create songs from the books. One of my favourite things about reading Pynchon is when characters burst into song.
The debut album of the ambient music project, Shadowy Lines is devoted entirely to Gravity’s Rainbow. The album is called “Mindless Pleasures”. You can download it on Bandcamp as a Name-your-price deal. Here’s their webpage:
http://www.autohypnosis.net/shadowylines/albums.html
Here’s the Bandcamp link:
https://shadowylines.bandcamp.com/album/mindless-pleasures
Thank you, Mike, for these additions! Thanks also to John Krafft and Thomas for a good number of other suggestions! I added them all. Now I count about 95 entries, but still not a single one for Inherent Vice or Bleeding Edge. Anyone want to do a recording of Meatball Flag’s timeless surf classic “Soul Gidget”?
Singer/Songwriter David Arthur Brown is a self-expressed Thomas Pynchon fan and often alludes to his work via his band Brazzaville. Most notably the song “Soft Parade,” from Morrow Bay (2013).
“Summer days remind me of the Soft Parade. Seventeen in L.A. and my heart kept breaking. So long ago—road trips down to Mexico—with ‘On The Road’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.'”
The Jazz Butcher – Lot 49 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8EVyEaXu_I
Thanks! This one is already listed (with a different Youtube link) as “Looking for Lot 49.”
So “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads isn’t a condensed view of GR?
What is GR if not life during wartime?
“I’ve changed my hair style so many times now I don’t know what I look like.” That’s not Tyrone Slothrop who changes his personality/name three or four times until his atoms just dissipate?
Yeah, possibly. Thanks for this. Before I add it to the list, I wonder if we can get more info to corrobate this. After all, there’s also a line that is very un-slothroppy: “No time for dancing, or lovey dovey I ain’t got time for that now.”
I am on the recording of “Unsung Pynchon” by Barry Koron, who was my partner at the time we recorded it in New York in the 1980s. We made a CD, of which I have a copy, but I don’t know if there are any of them left. I thought I gave you this information a few years ago, since you seemed to know so little about it. It’s a wonderful recording.
Sorry about my late answer… If you still have the CD, I think it would be wonderful if you could upload the MP3s somewhere and share them with the universe! That way I could link to those tunes.
Barry passed away last year and I don’t know what the copyright situation is (if any) regarding these songs now. I will ask his daughter.
Full of references in the track titles here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sombunall-Beneva-Clark-Nova/dp/B002RZZ14G/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Beneva+%26+Clark+Nova&qid=1594675035&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-2
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sombunall-Beneva-Clark-Nova/dp/B002RZZ14G/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Beneva+%26+Clark+Nova&qid=1594675035&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-2
I wonder if these are actual references and not just resonances that we as readers of Pynchon are sensitized to. Is there any other piece of information to corroborate that these songs were inspired by Pynchon?
The song in page 300 of my edition of V is very similar in content to “We Suck Young Blood” by Radiohead, who are previously known to have made several Pynchon references.
The song “V” by Golden Smog from 1995’s Down by the Old Mainstream. It’s a great song!
Thanks, Anthony. That is a great song! I’m just not convinced that it’s a reference to Pynchon. Except for “V” there’s little to make that assumption, I think, and I found the following on the internet: “V is an ode to a friend of the band’s, a bartender from the Uptown Bar in Minneapolis.”
Here’s a Gravity’s Rainbow playlist I put together as I read the novel over the past several months
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IwJR1RYnxY2LARCnT1X6d?si=b52b7eedcc164aa1
Thank you, Eric. Would you like to explain what made you include songs? Inspiration, resonances, occasional reference perhaps?
All three of those. Some of the songs directly reference the novel, while some deal with similar themes. I also tried to imagine what Pynchon may’ve been listening to as he worked on the novel. But mostly the playlist was an exercise to help me make sense of the novel, even imagining what a film soundtrack would look like.
I think I may have written to you before about Barry Koron’s Unsung Pynchon. It was recorded in New York in 1987 and I am one of the performers on the recording. Barry was at that time my fiance and he wrote all the songs when we were living together, so I got to sing them all (but not on the recording).
Hi Carolyn, yes you did tell me a little over two years ago. It would be great if you could make the recording available! I will probably go through these pages soon and update some links, add a bit here or there.
Thanks for this – was prompted to come here when trying to locate some info about my own band, Greenfield Leisure, who are kindly included in your list (“too fat to frug, baby, that’s what you tell me all the time!”). If I recall correctly, we even tried contacting Mr Pynchon via his literary agent to get permission to “adapt” the lyrics, but something about the author living in a cave meant we didn’t get a definitive reply – so we thanked him anyway on the record sleeve. The late John Peel played “Too Fat To Frug” on his BBC Radio One evening show back in the day – there is an audio clip of Peel’s wry intro somehwere on the interweb. Greenfield Leisure still pop up from time to time on college radio, internet stations, eBay, Discogs and YouTube. Oh, and for die-hard fans, there’s a bunch of stuff on Bandcamp. Thanks for listening.
For the past twenty years i have been performing, live and on record, something I call Spirit Songs. They are all generated, William Burroughs/Bryon Gysin style, by cutting up Gravitys Rainbow and V. I improvise the backing to these pieces rendering each rendition completely different. No fixed harmony, tune or melody. There are many versions scattered across the music platforms. One of my favourites is this one – https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-spirit-songs-live
While many of these references are to single songs and less well known acts one should note that Mark Knophler’s entire album Sailing to Philadelphia was influenced by Mason/Dixon.